Some fragile articles, such as screen panels, tend to become damaged on the way of delivery or in the process of handling. To avoid undesirable damage, these fragile articles are usually externally packaged with some buffer packaging material. With a buffer effect provided by the buffer packaging material between the articles and a packing box holding the articles therein, the articles are avoided from any external impact forces directly applied thereon and accordingly protected against damage caused by such impact forces.
Conventionally, the buffer packaging material is made of a foaming material or other polymeric materials. The buffer packaging material removed from the protected articles is usually no longer usable and discarded. Since the buffer packaging material made of foaming material has bulky volume and is non-biodegradable, it would cause serious environmental pollution.
To overcome the problems with the conventional bulky and non-biodegradable buffer packaging material, a paper-tube buffer device has been developed and introduced into market.
FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a conventional paper-tube buffer device 600, which is a substantially U-sectioned hollow channel having a U-shaped inner wall 610, a U-shaped outer wall 620, and a hollow space 630 enclosed in between the inner and the outer wall 610, 620. The U-shaped inner wall 610 serves to clamp on an edge portion of an article to be protectively packaged, and the U-shaped hollow space 630 serves as a buffer space to buffer impact forces or compressing forces applied to the U-shaped outer wall 620, so as to achieve the purpose of protecting the article against damage.
The conventional paper-tube buffer device 600 utilizes the hollow space 630 as a buffer space. However, the paper tube for forming the buffer device 600 has limited compression resistance, and tends to become deformed under compression when a relatively high compressing force or impact force is applied on the paper-tube buffer device 600 to thereby cause damage to the protected article.